What Do They Do With Your Soul?
by TolkienScholar
Summary: Oneshot. Dally's never cared if there is a God or not, and if there is, he isn't in any big hurry to please him. But with Johnny dead, Dally finds maybe he cares more about what God thinks than he realized. Enough, even, to do something drastic... Warning: EXTREMELY dark. Read full warning inside.


**Disclaimer: **_**The Outsiders**_** is the property of S. E. Hinton****. No copyright infringement is intended. The title is taken from the song "After All (The Dead)" by Black Sabbath, and the entire fic is heavily influenced by this song.**

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**MC4A Challenges:** FF; SoC; LL; NC; ToS; BAON; VV; Cluster; Rum; RoB; ER; Fence; O3; SN; DP; War; Hang  
**Individual Challenges:** Short Jog (N); New Fandom Smell (Y); Tissue Warning (N); No Proof (N); Times Go On (N); Real Family (N); Team Player (N)  
**Representations:** Dallas Winston; Johnny Cade; Greasers; Police; Preacher; Sunday School; Theft; Physical & Emotional Abuse; Grief; Religious Questioning; Major Character Death; Suicide; Heaven & Hell  
**Bonus Challenges:** Second Verse (Under the Bridge, Where Angels Fear, Muck & Slime, Middle Name, Spinning Plates, Found Family); Chorus (Some Beach, Abandoned Ship, Head of Perseus, In the Trench, A Long Dog, Larger Than Life, Mouth of Babes, Tomorrow's Shade, Pear-Shaped)  
**Tertiary Bonus Challenges:** SN(Rail); O3 (Oust)  
**Word Count:** 1238

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**Warning: This fic has some extremely difficult themes and is very different from my usual work. Apart from the heavy (censored) profanity, Dally expresses some quite blasphemous ideas in this fic. Please understand that this is my exploration of what I imagine Dally, in his grief and anger and confusion, might have been thinking on that awful night, and in no way do his thoughts reflect my own beliefs about God, heaven, hell, etc. I believe there are answers to the questions Dally raises, and the fact that he did not wait to find them out is, to me, part of what makes his story so tragic. If you would like to discuss anything about this fic with me, my PM box is always open.**

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What Do They Do With Your Soul?

It ain't that I don't believe in God, it's just that I don't care. Maybe there is some b––––– up there in the sky judgin' every little thing I do, but what's that to me? If there is, then he's the same b––––– who put me here in the first place, so I don't see what I'm supposed to owe him, other than maybe to sin as much as I possibly can just to p––– him off. What's he gonna do, throw me in hell? I already been livin' there my whole life.

I told all that to Johnny one time. Usually he admires when I cuss _(admired, you moron, he ain't never gonna do it no more)_, but that time his face went all white and he begged me to stop. Guess he was scared I'd get myself in even more trouble with the Big Man, as if that were possible. I sorta laughed at him, but I stopped talkin' that way. If Johnny wanted to waste his time prayin' to a God who'd let him be born to a dad who beat the s––– out of him all the time and a mom who didn't give a rat's a–– about him, well, that was his business. Probably he'd wise up eventually, and in the meantime Johnny deserved any little thing that could make him happy. I wasn't about to stand in the way of that.

_So what now, huh, Big Man? He believed in you. Dunno why, but he did. Even sacrificed himself to save somebody else; that's supposed to count for somethin' with you, ain't it? So you gonna hold up your end of the bargain? Give him his little harp and angel wings or whatever the h––– he thought he was gettin' out of it? Or can't you have hoods like him dirtyin' up your fancy golden streets?_

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny!" I slam my hand on the steering wheel. It ain't fair. It ain't fair that Johnny and I neither one ever got an easy break, and it ain't fair that people judge us harder than they judge a guy like Bob Sheldon who never had any rough breaks in his life. And if God's the same way, then who gives a s––– what he thinks? He don't know what it's like.

But all of a sudden, I realize I do give a s–––. I wanna know where Johnny is. I always made it my business to know while he was alive _(man, I hate the sound of that)_, ever since that awful time the Socs jumped him; if he got into trouble again, I wanted to know where to find him and the fastest way to get to him. I'd've never let on, but that week the boys were away was as hard on me as it was on Darry, not knowin' for sure if they made it safe to the hideout or whether Johnny was okay. Plenty of stronger men than him have been messed up bad by their first time killin' a man. This, though, this is much worse. I know where Johnny's body is, and where it's headed once the doctor finds it, but that ain't Johnny no more. He ain't at his house, or in the lot, or at the Nightly Double. He ain't anywhere on this earth, and either all this God business is bull–––– and he's just gone, or he's in one of two places: heaven or hell. And I can't for the life of me scrape together enough memories of Sunday school to figure out which. I definitely remember somethin' about "Thou shalt not kill," but…

_D_––– _it, God, Johnny was just tryin' to save his best friend from gettin' drowned! Ain't that a good enough reason? You gonna punish him forever just for that?_

Flying around a corner, I catch sight of the little church where Pony and Johnny used to go. I slam on my brakes and stop in front of it, alone in the middle of the deserted street. There's no lights on anywhere, in the church or in the little parsonage beside it, so I figure the preacher and his family must all be in bed. I have a fleeting vision of myself pounding on the door, demanding to know what's happened to my friend's soul. I see the preacher stare at me—wild-eyed, greasy-haired, bruised and burned and bloodied—and shut the door in my face because it ain't his job to deal with hopeless sinners like me. Ain't his job to risk his family gettin' murdered in their beds to help a hood. Not one like me, and maybe not one like Johnny. I step on the gas and roar on.

Then an idea hits me, and the second it does, I know it's crazy. No, not crazy. Demented. Deranged. Unhinged. If I was thinkin' straight I'd never even consider it, which is why I need to act now before the hard, cold, rational part of me, the part that's all that's kept me alive so far, has a chance to take back over. Because I'm sick of bein' hard, sick of bein' able to take whatever life throws at me and laugh at it, cuss it out, throw a solid punch at it and move on like nothin' ever happened. Sick of pretendin' nothin' ever touches me, sick of believin' it myself sometimes. Sick. Like what I'm about to do.

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I can already hear police sirens as my shaking hands shove quarters into the payphone. Quarters I swiped from the grocery store cash register, because this time it wasn't about stealin' the money, and neither quarters nor Benjis mean a thing where I'm headed.

Darry's voice on the phone is tight, and I wonder fleetingly if the kid made it home okay. I hope so, but I don't ask. There's no time.

The fuzz are hot on my tail as I come hurtlin' into the lot; I ditched my car a couple streets over. The gang's all there, runnin' toward me as if they think it'll do any good. I hear the police car pull up, and doors slam as they hop out. I skid to a stop under a streetlight, turn, yank the empty heater out of my waistband. Ponyboy lets out a choked scream from behind me, and I know he knows what I'm about to do. And maybe understands it, too, at least as well as anyone could.

I don't know if there is a God, and I never really cared. But I do know a kid like Johnny deserves somethin' more than what he got outta this life, and if it takes believin' in God for him to get it, then so be it. Me, I know where I'm goin'. I been on a highway to hell as long as I been alive, and that ain't hardly exaggerating. But Johnny deserves better, and if I get downstairs and find out he's there too, I mean to personally shove my way up to them pearly gates and give God an earful until he changes his mind, or failing that, to take all Johnny's torturin' on top of my own so he don't have to suffer. And if I get down there and don't find him, well then, I'll know he's in heaven finally gettin' to be happy, and I figure I can take just about anything knowin' that.


End file.
